


Back to Zero, Here We Go

by Rosage



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Season 2 Episode 49 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-19 15:56:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17604404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosage/pseuds/Rosage
Summary: He hasn’t had a name in 16 years.





	Back to Zero, Here We Go

Before he enters a town, he practices introducing himself. He prepares a name, holding out his scarred and bandaged hand to shake—purposefully, not his constant tremor. He always decides just the name will do.

In this town, the smell of freshly baked bread distracts him from what might be cheaper fare. “Kurt,” he tells the baker. He keeps it short. Even that sound quivers on his lips, falling misshapen. Words used to slide out as honey, easy on the tongue but heavy with suggestion, shaped exactly to his will. The Empire’s will. The baker lets him leave with the bread clutched in his hands.

At the bookstore, he can only afford one book, thanks to the bread. Deliberations weigh heavy on him, a hundred timelines depending on his selection, assuming it’s not all garbage. Again, he is Kurt, in case the shopkeepers talk, in case he has made the mistake of being noticed. He tucks a history book in his coat before hurrying out. He considers the inn, decides he has already made a foolish indulgence, and leaves the town before he has to introduce himself a third time.

He has lost 11 years, but he remembers everything, even the way _Bren_ sounded in his mother’s warm voice, or in Astrid’s deep one. He will not forget Kurt, nor will he forget a hundred other names, but it won’t matter.

When he stops a passing caravan, he is Ludwig. They leave him on the side of the road. With no reason to keep the name, he continues on his path.

* * *

“Who are you?” The goblin’s eyes are wide, yellow like a cat in the shadows, but the question comes out in one bold squawk.

“Caleb Widogast.” Each sound is repeated, punctuated with breaths of filthy air. His finger scratches invisible tick marks on the wall. One, two, three, four, five syllables, too many to get out smoothly on his best days, too many at all on his worst. It’s no matter. He’ll escape, one way or another, and the next time he speaks he will not be Caleb.

“I’m Nott.” Her mouth twists with irony.

In the dim light he stares at the tense set of her shoulders, unable to meet her eyes but too on his guard not to watch. His forehead scrunches. “You’re not Caleb?”

“No, no." She sighs. “I’m just Nott. Nott the Brave,” she adds with that same twist.

Understanding makes him nod, blankly, his finger scratching out the syllables. As with most names, he will remember, but he does not see why he would care.

* * *

“Caleb.” He doesn’t react. “Caleb, look at that.”

He startles at the realization he’s been addressed before focusing on the farm Nott is pointing out. Their stomachs are empty, and having two people means one can cause a distraction while the other steals.

“I take things all the time,” she says. “You should talk, you’re very good at talking, and I’m, well, Nott.”

He smiles a little, despite himself, the role of talker both too familiar and not familiar at all. Bren would have known how to fool a farmer, but such a paltry mission would have been beneath him. The starving person who approaches the farmer has no room for Bren’s pretentions.

While introducing himself, he remembers Nott’s goblin ears, possibly listening even from a distance. Exactly the way he told her, he says, “Caleb Widogast.”

His heart pounds several hundred times before he can stop talking and join Nott along the road. When he sees how much food she’s carrying, he realizes he will be introducing himself as Caleb for some time.

* * *

After a handful of months, he turns when she says _Caleb_. Even if a stranger is addressing somebody else, he startles, afraid he’s been caught. He needs to wash it off, he thinks sometimes, get rid of this thing that follows him and makes him recognizable. But like his dirt-crusted coat, it’s a handy disguise. Nobody from his past knows a Caleb, and sometimes he can get out one, two, three, four, five syllables like honey, thanks to practice.

He stumbles over even the first two when he meets the blue tiefling—Jester, he has to assume it might matter to know, now that he’s entered the city to find a group. She already has one. Even more people enter, and people call him Caleb more times than he counts.

In impractical moments, he thinks of what he might have picked, if he’d known back in that jail cell he would need to keep a name for a while. Sometimes, he wishes he’d thought of _Nott_. He is not many things, and he needs people to think he’s even fewer. But she is another story—she is clever, and funny, and a quick learner, and she is _good_. She helps him steal things, and open doors, and survive battles. She even helps him drift to sleep at night, curled against his feet.

It does not make him feel like a person, but it brings him a little closer, enough so that he can see how far he has to go.

* * *

Peace comes from the beacon, from a dozen versions of himself chasing different points of light. He does not know their names.

* * *

Only his emptied stomach prevents him from vomiting again. He tries to look or listen for signs they’re being watched, watched by people who would torture and kill anyone with him as readily as the townsfolk would kill Nott. His eyes and ears won’t cooperate. Nott’s tan ears droop like those of a lost goblin, and her words trip on their way out. The river where Veth drowned twists around them.

In the cart, the others stay close enough that they can talk quietly. They do not move in to attack or back away. He stays braced for it. Whatever Beau or anyone claims, she does not always bullshit, but her reference to them all retiring together is on such a distant plane of reality it almost makes him dry heave.

When Fjord asks what he would prefer to be called, the wording leaves him stuck, as if his preference was a consideration. _Caleb_ will no longer fool any of them, though he will still need to use it if they return anywhere they have been. Bren was left back at the house he burned, and he remembers Kurt and Ludwig and a hundred other names, but none of those mattered to anyone.

“Let’s stick with Caleb, for now.”

They don’t question it, offering immediate acceptance as they have more times in the last hour than he can account for. Hooves clap against the dirt as the cart rolls on. A hand shaped like Veth’s returns his hold in a way that’s nonetheless familiar, and the impractical and soft and aching part of him hopes he will be introducing himself as Caleb for some time.


End file.
